Page 2 of Muzzled

“Sure is.” The woman smiled, easing the piece back into its protective bag. “On the left side, near the coffeehouse. Better grab one before they’re all gone.”

“Thanks. I intend to,” he muttered as he began winding his way toward the five corners.

The accuracies in the artwork were too precise to be a coincidence. If any gods or nymphs had decided to come topside to play among the humans, he needed to know about it. He was too close to tracking down the elusive Pirithous to have it thwarted by a mischievous deity, and he had enough distrust in the Olympians to be wary of any “coincidences” that could affect his work.

The crowd huddled around the coffee shop was large and tight, onlookers inching into every open space to gain a better view of whatever was happening on the sidewalk. Knowing his chances of worming his way through were slim, he remained on the outskirts and scanned the area for recognizable faces.

“Last piece of the night, folks!” a man called out, the top of a paper visible over the group. “Do we have a starting bid of thirty?”

As numbers were shouted out, he worked his way into the openings provided by the people moving on to the next artist, his gaze locked on the spray-painted depiction of the entrance of the underworld being held up. “One hundred,” he called out, tugging his wallet from his back pocket.

The man ducked out of view for a moment, popping up with the shake of his head. “Sorry, man. Maestro’s passing this one on to the lady in green. Come by tomorrow.”

Frowning at the refusal, he watched as an elderly woman accepted her artwork with a giddy smile, the rest of the losing bids murmuring their disappointment while they slipped back into the moving swarm on the street.

Jostling his way to the front, he waited while the guy finished packing up a box of art supplies strewn around the paint-splattered cement. “What time will you be back here tomorrow?”

Twisting a lid onto a jar of murky water, the young man shrugged. “Dunno, man. We’ll probably be on site around noon to get the most of the light.”

Glancing around the street for any sign of the artist, he exhaled. “I’ll be here.”

*

Ryan watched thered light turn to green and shoved his motel room door open. He tossed his keycard onto the dresser alongside his wallet and phone.

It had taken nine hours of walking the festival streets, but he was confident he’d managed to identify all possible targets on site, the worn map in his back pocket now covered in notes and reminders. Several of the performers had been eliminated at a glance by age and another dozen were female, but the rest would remain candidates until he was able to narrow the city block the Pirithous staked out to work.

The Maestro had made the list, with the uncanny replicas of the underworld he’d seen touching a tad too close to home for his liking. If there was a deity on his turf, he wanted to know who he was dealing with.

And if it wasn’t a deity inspiring the art and the images truly were coincidental, he wanted one of the stunning pieces to bring down to his mistress.

Toeing his shoes off, he flipped his laptop open and sunk onto the bed, his feet aching from the hours spent pounding the pavement. He opened a Word document and unfolded his map, entering his night’s notes and adding a few observances he hadn’t bothered documenting on site.

The possibility the Pirithous was a festival follower, not a performer or artist.

The likelihood the bloodline had wandered the area before setting up in a specific location.

The odds the line wasn’t present the first night.

He’d stalked the festival circuit enough by now to know many of the traveling artists were rabid about the spots they chose to occupy for the duration of their events. But there were others who sauntered along and set up shop wherever an opening presented itself. Some were local, others touring. All types were identified in his notes, the wanderers highlighted in green, the meticulous choosers in red, locals in blue, and tourers a bright orange.

His brothers enjoyed giving him a tough time about his spreadsheets, notes, maps, and charts. Bo and Alex had witnessed his documentation methods hundreds of times over the centuries and while they had the tendency to tease him about his color-coding and his use of fonts and shorthand, he knew they were grateful he was the one who kept the records. It freed them up to track, to hunt, to do what came naturally to hellhounds on a mission.

But this time, he was alone. It was up to him to study, to sniff out and follow their target until he needed to call his brothers in for the final takedown.

Alex was living down in California with his fiancée, managing the local tavern and chasing rabbits through Joshua Tree National Park where the love of his life, Charlotte, worked as a ranger.

Bo and Sage, his wife and soul mate, were back in Seattle where she was finishing up a doctorate in art history and he was running his own business. Restless and miserable for most of his existence, Bo was finally settled and happy.

The search for the Pirithous may have been their duty, but it wasn’t their obsession. Their hearts were tangled up with women who loved them, challenged them, and put them in their place when necessary. They weren’t like him. They didn’t live and breathe obedience to Hades and Persephone. They garnered no pride from the hunt, no sense of accomplishment for a job well done.

But he did.

Or had.

Glancing at the time, he flipped through his notes again.

This Pirithous had evaded his meticulous documentation, but not Bo’s intuition. While Ryan believed their last takedown was the final one, Bo had insisted for years there was one more, one they’d missed. His ego hadn’t allowed him the luxury of acknowledging he may have been mistaken, and it was that weakness he was paying for now as he worked alone, paying the penance for his arrogance.

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